LET HIM WALK: Rex Ryan and Mark Sanchez have been joined at the hip since they joined the Jets for the 2009 season, but the coach’s benching of the one-time franchise quarterback yesterday should mark the end of an era. Photo: AP

For the sake of the Jets, for the emotional well-being of long-suffering Jets fans who are mad as hell and can’t take it anymore, Woody Johnson must next summon the green-and-white Buttmobile and drive Mark Sanchez out of Gotham.

Rex Ryan and general manager Mike Tannenbaum put all their eggs in Sanchez’s basket and all of them are scrambled now.

Ryan finally has benched Sanchez for Greg McElroy, a move he should have made two weeks ago, a move that comes too late to save this season.

Now it is about trying to save next season and beyond, as well as themselves.

It is telling that Ryan would not even commit to Sanchez as his Quarterback of the Future.

“We have two games left, that’s where my focus is gonna be,” Ryan said last night. “What’s past that will be determined later.”

If Ryan and Tannenbaum were geniuses for the first two years of the Sanchez Era, then they are dunces for the last two.

As he steers the Titanic into the stormiest seas he has yet encountered, Ryan seems to realize he has no choice but to throw Sanchez overboard.

To deep-6 No.6.

He can never be Broadway Mark now.

Ryan needs a new quarterback and offensive brain trust, and Sanchez needs a new address, if the Jets can somehow, some way find a sucker for a shattered quarterback they brilliantly guaranteed $8.25 million next season.

Dunce cap number for 2013 if they designate Sanchez as a June 1 cut: $12.35 million. With an added $4.8 million in 2014. Dumb and Dumber.

Ryan’s failure: He fiddled while Sanchez burned.

The organization’s failure: Tebow Time was a complete waste of time — their time, his time, Sanchez’s time.

Ryan keeps McElroy inactive for the last two weeks, then yanks Sanchez for the very first time and bypasses Tebow? Who’s calling the shots, Kotite? Lou Holtz? The Jets should do the right thing and free Tebow. Free-bow. They did both Tebow and Sanchez a disservice.

If Ryan still thinks Sanchez will be taking him to the White House one day, the owner should have the baseline test administered to Ryan for a possible concussion.

If Ryan weren’t so stubbornly loyal, maybe he could have turned to McElroy off the bench to beat the Titans on Monday night. Except McElroy had about as much chance of playing as Vinny Testaverde.

If Ryan didn’t hand the ball to McElroy yesterday, his own locker room would have seen him not as the head coach of the Jets but as the head coach of Mark Sanchez.

In his last two prime-time appearances, Sanchez has resembled an unnerved contestant on “Pros Vs. Joes.”

He followed up his infamous Butt-fumble against the Patriots on Thanksgiving night with a performance that was the modern-day dry version of Richard Todd in the Mud Bowl. Todd was gone a year later.

There was no way Ryan could serve up Sanchez to the angry mob that would have been waiting in ambush for him, two days before Christmas, against the Chargers.

Through every fault of their own — from trading for Tebowmania to Tony Sparano’s gross misuse of Tebow to surrounding Sanchez with mediocrity everywhere he turns — the Jets have offered the NFL a veritable treatise on how to turn your young franchise quarterback into a basket case. It doesn’t excuse 50 Sanchez turnovers over two years — a ghastly figure that approaches Ryan’s number of guarantees. You either rise above the fray or you do not.

Sanchez clearly needs a change of scenery to try to resurrect his career. He needs to start over. He is a pariah here now. He is Ollie Perez.

Ryan should keep all three quarterbacks active for the last two games — no need to strip Sanchez of his dignity, he’s a good guy and deserves better than being declared inactive. Just keep him on the sidelines, charting plays.

Your quarterback surrenders leadership when he surrenders the football with reckless disregard. When he makes the kind of bad decisions and bad throws that rookies not named Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III and Russell Wilson make. When he no longer is the one who gives his team the best chance to win.

The Jets must explore a trade with Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, Sanchez’s old coach at USC, for Matt Flynn. They should consider the 49ers’ Alex Smith, who is stuck behind Colin Kaepernick.

If the owner understandably views releasing $anchez as an irresponsible leap off the fiscal cliff, then he would have to return as an insurance policy once Tebow earns his hostage release.